Easy Cheese Appetizer Recipe

We're still in Paris and I've been feeling a little lazy as our vacation winds down. Maybe it’s a subconscious awareness that we’re about to go back to the daily grind. Still, we need to eat, and these cheese appetizers literally take about 10 minutes to assemble. This gives me plenty of time to do, well, other things.

I stacked cheese and sesame crackers, Rocamadour (goat) cheese, store-bought cherry preserves and sun-dried tomatoes into these little bites. They are so delicious, my husband Lulu could eat them by the dozen while waiting for dinner to be served.

The sweetness from the preserves and creaminess from the cheese pair wonderfully. You could make small variations using other chutneys or relishes as well.

Cantaloupe and Cherry Fruit Salad with Maple Ginger Syrup

We're hitting the very end of cherry season in California. I made a fruit salad combining cherries and sweet cantaloupe. Once pitted and sliced, I let the fruits macerate in cardamom and ginger-flavored maple syrup until the juices begin to flow. I also spiced the fruit salad with thinly sliced candied ginger to accentuate the flavor.

This is a quick and easy dessert recipe that celebrates the end of the summer. There's probably a week or two left to enjoy cherries; otherwise you'll have to wait till next year or hit the frozen aisle of your market. 

Agar Agar Cherry Panna Cotta Recipe

Agar agar panna cotta is my way of making a light dessert suitable for a strict vegetarian diet. Agar agar powder is a good gelatin substitute for vegans and vegetarians. It's derived from seaweed and is cooked the same way you would gelatin. It's widely used in Asia, especially for making rau câu (Vietnamese jello cake).

This time around I decided to flavor the panna cotta with cherries. I incorporated fresh fruit, cherry extract and a little red food coloring to make the dessert more appealing. We have some very pretty verrines which I used as the molds. It’s a tasty summer dessert with definite visual appeal!

Cherry Creme Brulee with Stewed Cherries

I wanted to make a crème brulée that was absolutely packed with cherry flavor. No subtlety here. I'm talking full on, Witches of Eastwick levels of cherry flavor. To accomplish this, I added cherry extract to the custard, and placed a layer of stewed cherries at the bottom of each bowl. I finished each dessert by serving it with a maraschino cherry.

It's not cherry season yet, so I used frozen cherries. They are picked at the peak of ripeness, so they taste great. When thawed, frozen cherries can lose their form, but since I was stewing them, the shape of the cherries didn't matter so much. Cherries may not immediately come to mind when you think of winter desserts, but their ready availability in a variety of forms that are great for cooking make them an excellent choice.

Black Forest Cake

Black forest cake is a very moist chocolate cake made with crème fraîche and cocoa powder and layers of kirsch (cherry liqueur), cherry jam, mascarpone, maraschino cherries and chocolate shavings. I baked the cakes in mini heart-shaped springform pans, perfect to surprise my husband Lulu for Valentine's Day! Of course, now that I've written it here, he won't be surprised. I'll have to come up with something else. What can I say; his loss is your gain.

I had my first black forest cake (Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte) in 8^th grade during German class. We were learning the German words for different ingredients and I remember that it made us all very hungry. In the German textbook, there was a recipe for black forest cake. One of the girls in the class decided to make the cake and brought it in the next day. It was so delicious that I've kept the recipe ever since, though with a few changes. Guten Appetit!